Grapefruit Records

Various Artists - Across the Great Divide: Getting It Together in the Country 1968-1974 (2019) {3CD Set, Grapefruit Records}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.51 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 559 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 29 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1968-74, 2019 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red | CRSEGBOX061
Rock / Folk Rock / Country Rock

As the Day-Glo tide of psychedelic that swept over the U.K. in the late '60s began to recede, something far less ornate and flashy took root in its place. Spurred on by the artistic and commercial success of Traffic's folk- and jazz-influenced debut album – which was recorded out in the countryside – the Byrds headlong plunge into country-rock on Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and the Band's brilliant slice of backwoods Americana, Music from Big Pink, all sorts of groups and artists sprouted up to play loose and wooly blends of organically grown folk, country, jazz, and rock. Some of the bands were beat group leftovers looking to evolve past paisley (the Searchers, the Tremeloes), some were city boys gone to seed (Mott the Hoople, the Pretty Things), and some were just weirdos like Greasy Bear, or lazy-Sunday balladeers like Curtiss Maldoon, all doing their own freaky thing.

Various Artists - A Slight Disturbance in My Mind: The British Proto-Psychedelic Sounds of 1966 (2020) {Grapefruit Records}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44.1kHz - Digital Download -> 1.04 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 547 Mb | Cover | 5% repair rar
© 1966, 2020 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red | CRSEGBOX066
Rock / British Invasion / British Psychedelia / Freakbeat / Psychedelic / Mod

Another lovingly curated rock & roll gem from Cherry Red's archival Grapefruit Records imprint, A Slight Disturbance in My Mind is an expansive three-disc set entirely devoted to the opening phases of Britain's budding psychedelic movement. By late 1965, the American underground, particularly San Francisco's LSD-inspired drug culture, had begun to infiltrate popular music. The Byrds and other West Coast groups began to adopt a more experimental attitude while in the U.K. bands like the Yardbirds and, more prominently, the Beatles forged their own new directions away from rock's more easily digestible conventions.

Various Artists - Gathered from Coincidence: The British Folk-Pop Sound of 1965-1966 (2018) {3CD Set, Grapefruit CRSEGBOX043}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 791 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 485 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 24 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1965-66, 2018 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Records | CRSEGBOX043
Rock / Pop / Folk Pop / Folk Rock / Psychedelic Rock

Prior to the early Sixties, folk and pop musicians inhabited largely different worlds. There were folk records that had become crossover pop hits, but in essence there was little or no common ground in terms of instrumentation or ideologies. But in the wake of the British beat/R&B boom (or, if you were in America, the British Invasion) and the emergence of Bob Dylan, such barriers were broken down for good. With British acts making music that, for the first time in nascent pop history, matched the quality of their American counterparts, suddenly everything was grist to the mill and musical cross-pollination was almost de rigueur.

VA - Dust On The Nettles: A Journey Through The British Underground Folk Scene (1967-72) {3CD Grapefruit CRSEGBOX030 rel 2015}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.22 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 554 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 27 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1967-72, 2015 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red Record | CRSEGBOX030
Folk Rock / Pregressive Folk / Psychedelia / Pop Fok / Electric Folk / British Folk

With 63 tracks and a total running time of just under four hours, Dust On The Nettles examines the metamorphosis that British folk underwent during the late 1960s, when the influence of psychedelia and the counterculture saw the idiom being twisted into all kinds of new and exotic shapes, as the finger-in-the-ear folk clubs of yore were inexorably drawn into a brave new world of Arts Labs, free festivals and the nascent college/university circuit.

Various Artists - New Moon's In The Sky: The British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1970 (2019) {3D Set, Grapefruit CRSEGBOX0}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.37 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 563 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 35 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1970, 2019 Grapefruit Records / Cherry Red | CRSEGBOX059
Rock / Pop / British Psychedelia / Prog-Rock / Art Rock / Psychedelic Pop

Having documented the British psychedelic scene with anthologies devoted to the years 1967, 1968 and 1969, Grapefruit's ongoing series fearlessly confronts the dawn of the Seventies with a slight rebrand. New Moon's In The Sky: The British Progressive Pop Sounds Of 1970 features (appropriately enough) seventy tracks from the first year of the new decade as the British pop scene adjusted to life without The Beatles. The 3-CD set concentrates on the more song-based recordings to emanate from British studios during 1970, whether from a pure-pop-for-then-people perspective or the more concise, melodic end of the burgeoning progressive rock spectrum.

Crawling Up A Hill is a fascinating document of a genre that, though relatively short-lived, would have a seismic influence on the subsequent development of rock music.